Chicago’s air pollution advisories have hit a 10-year high and some residents are suffering

CHICAGO Some Chicagoans who have braved hazy skies in recent weeks say they’ve caught a cold as the state crosses an unfortunate milestone: the most predicted days of unhealthy air pollution in more than 10 years.

And it’s still halfway through 2023.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued an Air Pollution Day of Action for the Chicago area through Wednesday, its 13th such designation this year, spokeswoman Kim Biggs said.

Caution is given when air quality is predicted to be unhealthy for sensitive groups for two or more consecutive days.

The 13 air pollution warnings in the first half of this year are the most since before 2012, when 12 days of air pollution action were recorded. Last year there was only one day of action against air pollution. There were four in 2021, 10 in 2020 and none in 2019.

This year’s air pollution advisories have all come in the past three months, with one in May, 11 in June and another on Wednesday, Biggs said.

The number of days dangerous to air quality is concerning as the planet suffers from an increasingly cluttered climate, which on Monday had its warmest day on record anywhere in the world, said Anastasia Montgomery, climate change researcher at Northwestern University.

But Chicago’s peak Air Pollution Action Day could also be a sign of bad luck, as the haze of unprecedented Canadian wildfires spreads across the United States, Montgomery said. Chicago’s air quality ranked as the worst of major cities in the world last week.

Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

That smoky air combined with a rise in ozone emissions typically seen in the summer created a perfect storm for days of high air pollution, Montgomery said.

I’m reluctant to draw any conclusions because we expect variability in air pollution numbers from year to year, Montgomery said. But if we zoom out and do nothing to change our behavior, air quality will surely continue to deteriorate.

Montgomery added that one freak natural disaster appeared to help wipe out another: Chicago’s historic summer floods and Sunday’s rain cleared some of the air pollution.

The researcher suspects that the worst of the city’s dangerous air is behind us, for now.

We’re not entirely out of the woods as long as it’s summer, when we see the most action days on air pollution,” Montgomery said. People who are sensitive to air pollution should continue to keep an eye out.

Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Northwestern Medicine has seen a 10 percent increase in calls to its lung clinic since smoking began sweeping through the city, spokeswoman Michelle Green said.

Patients at Advocate Health Care Clinics with asthma and emphysema have needed additional care, Executive Medical Director Dr. Paul Coogan said.

But Advocate Clinics and Rush University Medical Center have not seen substantial spikes in new respiratory cases, doctors said.

The city’s air quality is already poor, posing recurring risks to those with stressful conditions especially in the city’s south and west sides and near its highways, said Dr. Yanina A. Purim-Shem-Tov, Rush’s medical director.

We’ll be back to our baseline levels, but our case numbers are pretty high to begin with, Purim-Shem-Tov said. There is an increase in highway congestion and traffic and in those hardest hit spots you were seeing more children with asthma.

Some Chicagoans said they’ve gotten sick from the city’s steamiest days, but not seriously enough to go to a doctor or hospital.

Lindsey Sowell said she took her 2-year-old son to the park last week as haze began to color the city. Since then the family has had a runny nose, headache, cough and congestion.

It’s harder to protect him when he’s too young to wear a mask, Sowell said. It was frustrating when the weather is finally warm and you want to be outside with your kid.

Wicker Park resident Karina Parada said she ran errands last week and developed a cough and sore throat shortly thereafter. She took the day off work.

They weren’t kidding when they said stay indoors, Parada said. I’ve talked to my colleagues about feeling under the weather, and it really is a thing.

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